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1/27/13

Obama's killings need more than 'because we say so''

"Why is it not only OK but praiseworthy for the U.S. government to use a drone [to kill] Anwar al-Awlaki a because he is an al-Qaeda “operative” who may not actually have killed anyone directly ...while Adam Lanza, who shot and killed 20 schoolchildren and seven adults, including his mother, before killing himself, could have had a trial that lasted weeks and cost millions of taxpayer dollars?" asks Micheal Kinsley at Bloomberg. com. He later continues: "...The Obama administration’s position is that... there’s no legal problem with drone assassinations for reasons that regrettably must remain secret. U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon...reluctantly acknowledges the administration’s right to maintain this absurd position. A “thicket of laws and precedents,” she wrote, “effectively allow the Executive Branch of our Government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusions a secret.”
The deaths of Awlaki and Lanza may not be tragedies, but the differences in how we think about them deserve better than a “because we said so” -- especially from a liberal Democratic administration led by a former president of the Harvard Law Review.[thanks BJS]